2009 ToDo:

What's a New Year without resolutions?  I admit, I used to dismiss the very notion of a resolution.  After all, why should you only commit once a year?  But the reality is we need to take inventory of our priorities periodically, and January 1st is convenient.

The 2009 rendition (for public consumption, anyway):

Read More Fiction:  Non-fiction makes you education.  But fiction makes you literate.  Weighty, topical books that pique my social conscious (the environment, justice, the economy) are important, but I need balance.  All suggestions welcome.

Mentor, mentor, mentor:  Increase time spent with my direct reports every week and discussing professional topics that go beyond execution.

Build my Cognos Vision:  2008 was about formulations of ideas.  2009 needs to build that into something demonstrable.

Focus Professional Blog:  2009 is the year of the Cognos-powered application.  Keep my blog focused.   

Diet:  Following the 5-meal principle, with at least 75g or protein every day.  Increased intake of vegetables and whole fruit, and eliminate processed foods except for weekly binges.

Be Religious About Heart-Rate Training 

2009 Races:  Stanford (improve 2008 time), UVAS (improve 2008 time), Alcatraz (TBD), Vineman 70.3 (under 5:25), Pacific Grove (under 2:30).

Here they are, documented for my own benefit.  Comments?  I'd love to hear them.

So you think your town is good during the holidays?

It's not as good as Sonora.  After Thanksgiving this year, Sonora will be an annual staple in our Holiday fun.  And Jamestown and Columbia are close behind...Tuolumne county really has it going on.  Cheers! 

Interesting Insight from Few

It's no secret I'm impressed by Tableau Software, and I'm a long-time reader of Steve Few.  So when Few posts about Tableau, it's definitely worth a read.

This is Your Brain on Facebook

Are you a Facebook addict?  Take heed, comrade, your countless hours tagging photos and using super-poke are a tell-tale sign on how you want to work:

• Knowledge workers crave validation.  You solve hard problems, right?  In fact, the software business is constantly humbling to even the most experienced professional.  Not only do you have new problems to solve every day, most of them would never have crossed your mind if they hadn’t been thrust upon you by an irate customer or overworked colleague.  While you are resourceful and talented, we all want to hear “good idea” when coming up with a solution.  Isn’t validation from our friends the reason we joined Facebook in the first place?
• Group decisions are usually good decisions.  Given tough the problems we face, group input can be invaluable to give different perspectives that ultimately lead to a better solution.  Need a good, healthy recipe for dinner?  Post the question to your group and see the volume of response.  It’s going to turn out way better than the leftover mac and cheese you were thinking about re-heating.
• A successful project involves many, many people.  Are you in sales?  I guarantee your most successful deals were touched by many people throughout the cycle.  Many of which may have been nothing more than a single comment you used in a meeting, then forgot quickly afterward.  But that minute piece of information may have been just enough to generate the lead, sway an opinion, or convince a key influencer.  The more of those you can get – and retain -- the better.

The beauty of collecting these one-off comments?  They’re often spot-on.  After posting a comment on my hotel in Dallas, a fraternity brother I haven’t seen in years let me know about his favorite hotel bar in the area.  Having known him in college, I knew his expertise in this area would be superb.

That, my friends, is the definition of value-add.  Now if he can only give me advice on a Windows-based ad-hoc query solution…

Happy Ping.fm is back

Ping.fm is back. It went down for a minute tonight, and to celebrate its return, I'll post to my blog from Ping.fm on iGoogle. Nice!

Organization Tips for Multi-Taskers

From my IBM blog.  I've since become less of a fan of "multi-tasking" -- but the organization tips remain.

Self-described "management consultants" are seemingly everywhere, but I still find personal management ideas fascinating.  There's something creative about rote organization of "stuff" in our lives.  Maybe it's the notion that time is increasingly valuable -- the more technology enables us, the more important it is to prioritize our work and our lives.

For the past few years, I've been drawn to David Allen and "Getting Things Done" for several reasons:

• Simplicity
• Emphasis on delegation (the right person for the right task)
  
• The concept that there are slices of time throughout the day that go unused -- and using them to do the right tasks can improve your productivity dramatically.
• The psychological benefit of following a methodology is as important to productivity as the organization itself

While Allen's methodology is great, it is rooted in paper-based methods and manual work flows.  Much of your day consists of executing tasks, and you must know which tasks to execute and their priority.  For example, if I spend 15 minutes in a taxi, I'm in a place where I can make required phone calls.  But I have to have a list of what calls to make and their priority to use that 15 minutes effectively.  In addition, if I one of those calls is to one of my employees, I should have a list in front of me of delegated tasks, so I can use that phone call to quickly go over status or answer questions.

Given the number of projects, clients, employees, and other strata in our lives, lists will quickly grow large and tasks will need multiple categories.  Allen's company has released some software products to help you manage, but I found using the Outlook plug-in to be cumbersome:

• I'm not always in front of my computer.  In fact, when I travel, I may use my Blackberry as much as my computer on most days.
• Categories in Outlook are difficult to manage, but are the only feature that can implement the methodology.
  
• I don't run my business, or manage my day, using Outlook (or Lotus Notes, for that matter).  And there's no single  medium that can serve that purpose.

About 12 months ago, I started using a little Web 2.0 site to manage my tasks, and it's now invaluable in my daily organization.  RTM is nearly perfect, since it has the key functions I need to get things done:

• Tags replace the concept of categories.  Simply associate any number of tags with a category.  For example, if I need to call a client, I can tag the task with the client name and a tag for "calls" -- so I can quickly find it on my taxi ride.
• The ability to add a task from anywhere as you think of them.  The Web interface is quite good (I particularly like the keyboard shortcuts) and has a nice adaptation for the Blackberry browser.  Tasks can be added via email via an address you receive when you register.  I've also started using integration with Jott, which allows me to add a task via a voice message.  This is important when I need to add something, but can't type it in (driving, for example).
• Due dates, reminders, and priorities associated with every task.

Some other good ideas can be found in various blogs, including Allen's site and GTD Times.

2 Things to do less

Note: this is posted on my blog at work, where I do most of my writing. But in case the financial crisis takes down IBM, I wanted to preserve it here.

Email
Is email the biggest productivity drain in business today? I say yes...and not for the reasons you might think. I can handle SPAM, administrative requests, and even Lotus Notes (sorry, IBMers, but as a long-time Outlook user, my efficiency dropped a notch or three moving to Notes). I can even deal with the volume of emails I receive: my delete button is fully operational.

The danger of email, and its allure, is that you feel productive when doing it -- but you really aren't. I can spend 24 hours a day giving the appearance of being ultra-responsive -- answering questions, checking in with my direct reports, letting my boss know what's going on. But, when I do that, I miss out on opportunities to really grow the business: talking to clients, coming up with new strategies and tactics to execute on them, solving some really tough technical problem that simply takes concentrated effort.

Lately, I find myself spending less time on email during the work day, and it has been quite refreshing. Instead of reacting to requests from the world, I find myself thinking ahead -- whether it's planning for my next client meeting or planning for how I think our business will change next year. The result: I'm better prepared and more valuable to my clients and my company.

Powerpoint (or any slide show presentation, for that matter)
While I've never been a huge fan of slides (charts, as they seem to be called around here), I've been totally turned off by a slide-show culture that seems pervasive at IBM, and has even infiltrated Cognos employees. Not only are the volumes bordering on obscene, the designs are often utterly grotesque, with 2 point type and montage of shapes that are supposed to represent something profound, but end up looking like the floor of a pre-school art class. Ugh.

When you think about it, slide shows are a terrible medium for engaging clients: the focus moves away from the people in the room and on to a wall or screen, where the content may or may not make sense to the people in the room. It also gives the client an excuse not to think, and that's a bad thing. The best bond you can form with your clients is when you are thinking together, creatively, on how to solve a problem that holds value to both parties. Slide shows explicitly define topics, which is not conducive to understanding the needs of the client.

Unless I'm presenting to a very large audience, I've given myself a 5 slide limit to my presentations. Any more than that, and chances are the scope of the meeting has gone beyond what is necessary or practical.

I'm back...

So I went off in the micro-blog world for a while, then focused on my blog at work. Now, I'm trying Ping.fm to link them all together. Let's see how it goes...